The Mute's Soliloquy

From the author of the Buru Quartet and one of the greatest writers of our time comes a remarkable memoir of imprisonment and survival.

In 1965, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was detained by Indonesian authorities and eventually exiled to the penal island of Buru. Without a formal accusation or trial, the onetime national hero was imprisoned on Buru for eleven years. He survived under brutal conditions, somehow managing to produce his masterwork, the four novels of the Buru Quartet, as well as the remarkable journal entries, essays, and letters that comprise this moving memoir.

Reminiscent of the work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Mute’s Soliloquy is a harrowing portrait of a penal colony and a heartbreaking remembrance of life before it. With a resonance far beyond its particular time and place, it is Pramoedya’s crowning achievement–a passionate tribute to the freedom of the mind and a celebration of the human spirit.

“A haunting record of a great writer’s attempt to keep his imagination and his humanity alive.”– The New York Times Book Review

“A story too vast and serious to ignore.”– San Francisco Chronicle (front page review)